Automobile lubrication stores and other vehicle service stores usually have a maintenance facility that consists of one or more service pits, each being approximately a three feet by seventeen feet opening in the floor. The automobile is driven over this service pit, and the worker gains access to the undercarriage of the vehicle while working from a room or pit beneath the automobile by reaching up through the service pit opening. This service pit opening is inherently dangerous to both the employees and to the customers of the store because of the probability of serious injury or death if a person were to slip or fall from the upper level into the eight (8) foot deep pit.
While the service pits usually have a roaming around the pit to prevent flow of water into the pit and to guide vehicles over the pit, there are usually no protective rails or other protective devices around the pit.
Employees are seen to routinely jump over the pit during the course of their movement around the shop. Also, customers who wander into the shop usually walk over to the edge of the pit to look in. Small children are particularly prone to investigate the pit.
Such an open pit violates basic rules of employee and customer safety and could be a great source of potential negligence claims to the store and the insurer of the store as well as being a source of violations and fines from state and federal government agencies such as OSHA.
The presently known prior art are U.S. Pat. Nos. 742,075; 3,866,624; 3,938,621; 4,188,985; and 4,762,242.